All posts by ozgurovic

Episode VIII is the second movie made by Walt Disney in the Star Wars series. Its name is Last Jedi. This time, it is not a very similar copy of the previous episodes, where in The Force Awakens, nearly everything was like a carbon copy of the previous movies.

We already met the new characters in The Force Awakens, so I will not get into details. We have a new Jedi Candidate, Rey. A new Darth Vader: Leia’s son Kylo Ren. New R2D2: BB-8. Of course we have characters from old series as well, e.g. Leia, Luke, Chewbacca. So, you have the copyrights, you have the characters, let’s make money! Sorry, let’s make the movie 🙂

When you talk about Star Wars, you must be careful, because there are millions of fans. They know every detail of the Star Wars universe. I am sure the writers are also one those fans. (I say writers, because although there is only one author credited, I am sure many people contributed to the final script). However, it may not be sufficient to be a fan of the Star Wars. You must have a good story to tell, because original Star Wars had a descent one. Just imagine, your father is on the dark side, and you convert him into the light, the good side of the force. There are space ships everywhere for the nerds, force for the spiritualists, a fight for freedom and peace for the activist, Yoda for the conservationist. You have lots of new stories in the emptiness of the space. You have nice visual effects.

So, what does the new Star Wars have in it, or does not have in it? Again it has a bad character who is on the dark side, Kylo Ren. WE don’t know if he will convert to light or not. There is balance or Ying Yang for the interested spiritualists. The last jedi vs darkness. The rebels fight for their freedom against the evil forces. Of course again we have Yoda and the old books of Jedis. We have better visual effects. Wait, did you realize. We have everything that we already had! It seems like a rephrasing of the old star wars series. The new series does not have much novelties to tell.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything worth to see. First of all, this is a big budget movie, which means that technical issues are correct. The scenario also doesn’t have big problems, except not being creative. There are some details which will be probably explained later, e.g. Master Codebreaker‘s role, who is advised by Maz Kanata. It is also worth mentioning that there will be new Star Wars spinoffs including Solo, which is based on Han Solo. So, if you like Star Wars, keep tuned in!

Mr Robot is a TV show about a hacker who tries to make his own revolution. Although it seems like a technological show, it is much more related to politics. I would classify it closer to Continuum with less science-fiction. However, I must admit that most of the hacking staff in the movie is science-fiction. You must be psychic to be able to hack all of those passwords with a good guess.

The series has a good connection with the audience because the characters in the show are from daily life. They work in an office with many personal problems. Elliot works in his boring cubicle just like Mr Anderson from Matrix and does hacking at nights. Of course he is 100 times more talented than regular hackers, otherwise why would this be an interesting story? Indeed, the story begins when he decides to do something to make the world a better place.

Until now I have given similarities to Matrix, so if you are fan of Matrix, you will probably like this one as well. But this is not all. The series have many references from Fight Club to Clockwork Orange. So if you like to discover all the details, you will like it because each scene has a special item to discover. But more importantly, the series has its own style. It is very dark and depressive. Unlike awaken Neo, Elliot is always in a state of depression. To overcome his problems, he is deciding that the world is the reason of his and everybody’s problems and he tries to change the world to make it a better place for everybody.

This is where the main question of the show starts for me: should you change the world starting from yourself? Would this mean a solution or a surrender? Or should you change the world? Elliot selects the latter one. But will it bring happiness to the world or should he undo everything for a new start? Since the show is highly political, this brings some questions from the real world. For example what would happen if the greedy companies are destroyed. Does it make the world a better place? If no one has any debts, would this solve the problem? Although the show is negative to these questions, we should remind that the real world is negative to the other case where the governments back up the big companies after the crisis. It has been a long time and still there does not seem to be a solid exit from the economical crisis.

I will not get into details about the lack of the correct economic views in the show. But one thing is that it is trying to say to the audience that it does not matter what you do about the evil corporations, there will be another monster waiting for you under your bed. Indeed it says that control is an illusion, which is equal to saying “Don’t try to struggle. You will lose anyway”. This is not the only political message, also there are messages related to Trump (do I need to say that it is anti-Trump?), China (indeed many details from dark army) and many other small details. I believe that they have a good collaboration with experts in their fields. If you know the technological investments of intelligence organizations, you will realize that this show is doing a good job. I think Robert Redford should be a guest star in at least one of the episodes as a tribute to ‘Three Days of Condor’ .

A final note about the co-producer of the series. Kor Adana is Turkish and probably inspired the team about the room with a Turkish flag and Ataturk statue where the scene was related 2015 G-20 meetings. They are doing a great job and taking care of every detail. I guess this is one of the reasons why techno geeks are really into these series. They really make everything seem like real.

I am not sure what was the initial expectation for the duration of the series, but currently it seems like it exceeded the expectations and the story is expanding a lot more than necessary. Although it is a great story I believe it is time to wrap up the it. Otherwise the story will flow even slower which will make it darker and more depressive or the stories will become unrelated, e.g. go more into real life politics which is good when you see the actual president of US in one scene, but I don’t think favoring one politician for another is a good idea. They may embarrass you when they have power, so it is best to keep a distance to all of them unless they are retired 🙂

Caution: This review is written in the third season, so it may contain some spoiler about previous seasons/episodes. Read it at your own risk!

BladeRunner: 2049

Do androids dream of electric sheeps? It is a novel written by Philipp K. Dick in 1968, and yes, the name of the android in the movie is “K.”. So, do you still wonder about the relation between the movie and the book? You are right, BladeRunner: 2049 is a sequel to the movie made in 1982, BladeRunner directed by Ridley Scott, which was based on the novel “Do androids dream of electric sheeps?”.

The original movie was in a near future after the 2019 nuclear war. In that movie, the duty of our cop Rick Deckart (Harrison Ford) was to distinguish the androids from the humans. Again we have a cop (K.) whose duty is to find the illegal androids and to terminate them. Like many of the sequels, there are many similarities between both of the movies. Afterall, if you have a good formula, why not use it? Indeed, this is what I don’t like about sequels, they use the successful formula and forget to create a new story. We should also remind that the initial movie was a great success in becoming a cult science-fiction movie. But id did not have the same success for its performance in the theatres.

There are some serious differences from the original BladeRunner. First of all, BladeRunner:2049 has much more psychological explanations. The original movie had more action thanks to Ridley Scott. In the new version the characters have more time for thinking. But the plot goes very similar to the previous one.

Relation to the book?

Another important difference is that in this one, we are faced with a Pinocchio. The main character of our movie, police K., has a deep desire of feeling like a real human. You feel like he is searching for his magical fairy. If you look at the movie from this window, then you may say that Jared Leto is Gepetto. You can even find a whale where Pinocchio manages to run away from it. Furthermore, it is not only officer K., who wants to become like a human, but all the androids have this hope. They want to have similar rights to humans, because they believe and want to prove that they are similar to humans. Although this is different from the idea of the original book, it is interesting. But, it is not emphasized strongly.

In the original book, the question was not that whether the androids can have similar properties with humans or not, rather it was even if they have very same properties with humans, does it make them conscious entities. Do we have the right to shoot them if they are conscious entities? I see the new movie as simplifying this question to a level where the androids can also have same properties with humans, and so they are conscious entities, we should not shoot them. While it is simplifying the problem, it shows as if it is more sophisticated by introducing more psychological motivations with respect to the first movie.

I think there will be even further sequels to this movie if the performance in theatres is successful. This movie is not as influential as the first one, but probably it is more successful in terms of numbers. Probably we will see further in the next movie related to the independence movements of the androids, and probably they will live in peace with humans by missing the main point of the original book.

It is difficult to talk for a movie full of metaphors without giving any spoilers. Even this is a spoiler itself. But, if you are used to Aronofsky’s movies, you already know what you will face with in Mother!. So, I will not talk about the details of the movie, or try to reveal out the metaphors, which would need a few tens of pages of explanation at least. Rather, I will talk about my own expectations and the relations to the old movies of Aronofsky.

In his interview for Mother!, he tells that he was not sure for making the movie, so he sent the initial text to a few friends and they encouraged him to make it. Indeed, you get this uncertainty when you are watching the movie. The director is not sure how to connect everything. The events are unrelated to each other. Sometimes there seems to be a relation in between stories. You expect it to be established. How distant can they be in a small house occurring in a limited timeline? But he’s making it once more. Everything is happening at infinity, but you don’t realise it. To be able to really understand what is happening, you must watch it a few times. The feeling of the curiosity is increasing from time to time. However, you still have the feeling that something is missing in the movie.

In mathematics, there is something called as completeness. The official explanation is “the state or condition of having all the necessary or appropriate parts.”. Since Aronofsky usually thinks in terms of mathematics, as you may have noticed from his movie ‘Pi’, I always expect complete movies from him. Indeed, this was the case until Mother!. Even if you don’t get it very easily like in ‘Fountain’, there was always a completeness in his movies. I mean that even if you don’t get the metaphors, it is still a movie with a plot. Everything starts and finishes in the movie, there is a story in front of your eyes, and a ‘secret’ story behind the metaphors. You can enjoy it with the feeling that there was something more in it. But in Mother!, this is not the case. If you don’t get the metaphors, it means nothing. The movie doesn’t connect the stories in the plot. This is not his style. Maybe this is a new era in his filmography.

Another point is of course the musics of the movie. There are good movies of Aronofsky without Clint Mansell, I agree. However, when he works with Clint Mansell, it is a classic: e.g.: Pi and Requiem for a Dream. You can watch these movies just for the music. They force a feeling of completeness in the movies. They must be occuring for a reason. This is divine.

Of course artists will try new things, they gain different experiences and reflect these in their new eras of their life. I totally respect this. However, I have to say I like the early style of Aronofsky. There was always mystisicm in his movies, but this is more than that. For my flavor, he needs the unseen hand of divinity, he needs Clint Mansell.

“Choose life
Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares
Choose looking up old flames, wishing you’d done it all differently
And choose watching history repeat itself
Choose your future
Choose reality TV, slut shaming, revenge porn
Choose a zero hour contract, a two hour journey to work
And choose the same for your kids, only worse, and smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug made in somebody’s kitchen
And then… take a deep breath
You’re an addict, so be addicted
Just be addicted to something else
Choose the ones you love
Choose your future
Choose life”